Rigs to Reefs: Reimagining our Energy Past for a Sustainable Future

Abstract:

Offshore energy development has led to the installation of thousands of offshore oil and gas platforms throughout the world’s oceans. Many of these platforms are aging relics, leftover designs from an era in hot pursuit of developing and extracting the world’s offshore oil reserves, with the expectation that they would be removed and disposed of at the end of their economic life. Over the decades that these structures have been in place, many have developed thriving reef ecosystems that provide habitat for certain commercially viable fish species. Traditional decommissioning involves the complete removal of platform infrastructure from the seafloor, resulting in loss of habitat and destruction of the marine ecosystems that have colonized the structure over its operational lifespan. However, complete removal is not the only option. In this presentation, we will discuss the alternative of repurposing offshore oil and gas platforms into artificial reefs and dive into the sustainability of this process, overviewing the opportunities and challenges from an economic, ecological, and social perspective.